three crazy shrimps

the kids are in the middle of their second session of swim lessons this summer. i never got around to posting about their first session that happened a little over a month ago. but you didn't miss much. the kids started off in the 'shrimps' class, and that's where they still are because they can't float on their fronts and backs for 5 seconds yet. but that's according to me, their swim instructor, and anyone else who can see that they don't know how to swim. but according to lily, sungu, and topher- they are really great swimmers!

lily's best trick is that she jumps into the water and then turns around and 'swims' to the side of the pool and grabs on to the wall. sungu is getting pretty good at floating independently and may be the first 'shrimp' to move on. topher is fearless/clueless and was the first to start swimming/looking-like-someone-who-is- drowning. he tries to kick but doesn't get very far very fast. but he tries! and it's awesome.

if you haven't ever checked out the aquatics program through the city of gilbert (town, whatever) you should! it's $25 for 8 lessons (monday-thursday for two weeks) and each lesson is 25 minutes long. 25 minutes seems like a pretty short amount of time, but as a parent who has to sit outside and watch her kids- 25 minutes is plenty long!!!

here are some pics of the kids during their lesson, and some pics of lovely miss sunha, who often also sits poolside with jeehon and i. even in 110+ degree weather, she manages to look so cool 9thanks for the hair flowers cindy!!!)

catching up

last week we hung out at a resort in scottsdale, and i didn't have free wi-fi, which is why i didn't blog. sorry folks. but you really didn't miss out on much!


jeehon turned 33 on sunday (the last time i wrote. i hate writing on the ipad so much that i couldn't even throw out a 'happy birthday!' to my sister. happy birthday jeehon! you're so old.)



chris learned to braid hair. just another skill to add to his already impressive resume.


james, my brother-in-law, was here. but now he's gone. it was such a huge blessing having him here for the duration of sunha's surgery. he got about 3 hours of a sleep a day for the 5 days that they were in the hospital, which allowed my sister to get more. and he was just great to have around. lily and topher love their imoboo. and they are also really fond of his ipad. too fond for my liking.


and finally, sunha showed us all how incredible she was all week! she was out of the hospital on saturday afternoon, and she was greeted by her brother and cousins who were very very concerned about the big 'owwie'. i didn't think she was going to be able to handle all the noise and craziness that comes with being around sungu, lily, and topher, but she seemed to really enjoy them! weird!
the best thing about the 3 kids is that even though they noticed that sunha looked different, no one verbalized it. sunha was still a bit swollen on saturday, and her head looks crazy with the staples in it. but none of the kids said anything. i was really proud of all of them, especially since the words 'gross' and 'weird' are in their volcabularies.
sunha was out and about on thursday, and she did great. she wore a hat to cover the staples and didn't try to take it off even once. we walked around barnes and noble, hung out at a splash pad, and even had lunch at the cheesecake factory. a great outting for all!

sunha is getting her staples out tomorrow, which is great for everyone. seeing her recover, and her body and skin recover from everything it went through two weeks ago makes me more and more astounded at the crazy, creative, and detail-oriented God that we serve.

thanks again for checking in with us so much during surgery and recovery. it's so great to know we are so loved and supported!

Sunha staycations

Su nha came home from the hospital yesterday and is doing so great!
We are in Scottsdale right now staycationing it up with the malloys.
I am actually typing on an iPad which I am not a huge fan of, so this is all I'm gonna write for now.
Thanks for the love and prayers. God is so good!

sunha strolls

today i got to hang out at the hospital for about 2 hours with my sister and my niece! and sunha is doing so great!

her face is still quite swollen, but she can open her eyes, which is so wonderful for everyone! yesterday when she couldn't see, jeehon said she was clawing about, reaching aimlessly in front of her. i think maybe she was looking for the light switch. poor little thing. but even in the midst of her blindness, she was very responsive- opening and closing her hands while jeehon sang one of her favorite songs, and making her adorable "huh?" noises when she thought people were talking to her. so precious.

she has been taking many strolls around the pediatric intensive care unit, in the wonderful little wagon they provided for her. nice to get some 'fresh' air. she also tried crawling around today, but kinda failed at that as her head is really really heavy. jeehon caught her 3 times, but the 4th, she kinda ate it. you live and you learn.

so we are all really really hoping she can get out of the hospital tomorrow. the doctor removed the dressing on her head that was covering the staples. i fortunately did not throw up when that happened right in front of me (did i mention i threw up at the hospital when i brought the malloys dinner two nights ago? i don't do that great in hospitals actually.) hopefully tonight will be a great night, with minimal pain meds, and optimal sleep, and then maybe the malloys can finally relax and get some good rest.

would you please continue to pray for speedy head-healing and very little pain for sunha? the doctor said all the scary post-surgery stuff is over, so thanks for the copius prayers you all threw up during the last few days.

sungu and my kids have been busy doing a bunch of swimming and movie watching and general mischief-making. today james took them for two hours to play in a splash pad at a resort that he booked for sunha to recover at. this is what happened when the kids were finished playing with their uncle/dad:

swollen sunha

good morning! sorry for the lack of updates yesterday- busy busy day.

we actually were able to go to the hospital for lunch. the kids obviously didn't see sunha, but i got to sneak in for a sec. her face and head are quite swollen now and she is not comfortable! i went to see her at night as well, and her face and head had swollen even more in the 9 hours since i had seen her earlier.

sunha is on quite a few different pain medications, but she needs to be off of the big stuff in order to be able to come home. hopefully they will be home tomorrow, but it all depends on how today goes.

the nurse said the swelling should go down a lot today and that she would be a new baby when that happened.

would you please pray that her sweeling foes down very quickly and that her pain dissipates, without the aid of too many pain meds?

jeehon and james are remaining sane and strong despite being confined to a pretty small room. thanks for going on this crazy journey with us! where would we be without prayer?

strong sunha

it's 1:10pm. sunha's surgery was scheduled for 7:30 this morning and the doctors said it would take about 3-4 hours. the malloys got to the hospital at 5:30am and were rip roaring to go.

the doctors took sunha at about 7:30, but had to draw blood and do some other stuff, so they didn't actually start until about 9:30. but they still managed to finish at about 11:30. amazing! the doctors came out to talk to jeehon and james and they said sunha did great and was already up and trying to get out of bed. silly girl!

so james and jeehon saw sunha and she just had a bandage on her head around her wound, and her face hasn't swollen up yet (that's supposed to happen later today-tomorrow), so that allowed jeehon to not freak out at all. yeah! she still has an IV in and a couple other tubes, but james has been holding his little girl and she has been sleeping peacefully on him since.

so the basic gist of the surgery is this: they shaved a bit of sunha's hair (so imagine her with a 'hairband of baldness') and cut the skin, pulled it back, pulled out the back of her skull, broke it into three pieces, put that back in, and sewed her up. craziness. she is supposed to be in the hospital anywhere from 3-5 days, but should be fully recovered in less than two weeks. again- craziness.

thanks so much for all the concerned texts and e-mails today! and for pretty hair things to help keep sunha extra beautiful while her hair grows back :) i will keep y'alls posted as recovery continues to happen. chris and i will be going to the hospital to see the little trooper later tonight. (thanks in advance for babysitting j and a!)

AND happy birthday to my sweet little nephew corban!

craniosynotosis

here is my beauitiful little niece holding out her hands, asking for your prayers. at her 1 year appointment, 2 months ago, the doctor noticed that sunha's head was kind of awkwardly shaped. so they got some x-rays and the doctor saw that her skull was fused together. for the most part, baby's heads are not supposed to fuse together til they are closer to 2 years old. needless to say, sunha's skull needs a little breathing room, and she is going to get just that on tuesday morning at about 7:30. jeehon found a really great surgeon here, dr. moss, and he will be taking care of my sweet little niece on tuesday. i will post his info in a later post. but would you please pray for my sweet little niece sunha (her english name is emma if that is easier for you to say!) that she would have a successful surgery and VERY QUICK and as-painless-as-possible recovery. would you also please pray for my sister who is just emotional, as any mother would be, under the circumstances. she is being very strong and all that good stuff right now, and we absolutely praise Jesus that James, her hubby, has been out here since tuesday last week, and will be here for the surgery and most of the harder recovery. thank you for that Jesus! please also pray for dr. moss, and the other folks who will be fixing up little sunha. i will send updates as things progress. i really appreciate your faithful prayers and love and support in this, and all the things i blog about when i ask for prayer. we feel em! God is good. here is a video i took of sunha when i was hanging out with her (and obviously topher, who makes a lot of cameo appearances in the video) on saturday. enjoy!

more ham

here are some more pics of some older hams- as in my parents.

again- i have pregnancy-brain so in no particular order there is a picture of my parents with their 4 grandkids, a picture of my whole family minus Edwin who was at the store, a picture of the kids with my parents enjoying a little picnic, sunha and my mom, and... i think that's it. enjoy the asian invasion to my blog.

ham time

i never post pics of the Hams cause i never have any! but now i have plenty! so many that i actually have to split it into two separate posts.

here is the younger post- my brothers and the kids.

i can't remember how i uploaded these pics, but in them you should find one of each of my bros- Alex, Edward, and Edwin. in another pic is my sister and Topher and i. and another pic of Chris paddling a giant swan that is holding him, Edward, Sungu, Lily, and Topher. he's so strong. :)

five minutes in a bad bad bad place

we are back in arizona and we brought some rain! yeah!

we had a really really great family vacation in toronto. we hung out with my brothers, and my sister, and my parents, and our friends too. it was a delight. until the last day.

friday was Canada Day. happy birthday Canada! it's the first time i have been in canada on it's birthday for years and years. so to celebrate our country's birthday, as well as our last day with our family, we headed to Ontario Place, a little amusement park type place. we saw Thomas the train on stage, rode a little roller coaster, played in a freezing cold splash pad, and lost our poor daughter.

yes. i lost my lily. and it was my fault. we went into this crazy area where there were two levels with gun-type things that shot out nerf balls, and other contraptions that when you out the balls back in the contraption they popped out and spewed out from the ceiling. it was craziness. there were kids and adults all over the place. chris had topher, jeehon was on sungu, i was on lily, and my brother edward was rovering about. it was a pretty flawless situation. or was it?...

lily loved the craziness. she would climb up the stairs, throw some balls, go down the slide, go back upstairs, go back downstairs, etc etc. i followed her as best as i could, but she could care less that i was stalking her. so i stayed 'upstairs' and caught a severe case of attention deficit disorder. i started picking up balls and throwing them at my unsuspecting sister below. then i saw topher walking around aimlessly so i brought him upstairs, and even got him hooked up with one of the ball guns. then we went to hit chris with a bunch of balls, only to have him hit me with a bomb of a question: "where's lily?" hmm. stumped, i said i didn't know and that i hadn't seen her in a while. panic. we split to find our girl and informed jeehon and edward that they needed to start looking too, whilst keeping topher and sungu safe at the same time.

i stayed inside and went back upstairs to get a bird's eye view of the place. kids running everywhere. i could not spot my little girl. i even jammed my chubby pregnant body down the slides just to make sure she wasn't hiding in there. i hoped against hope that she was hiding in a corner somewhere, but there weren't that many corners to hide in. things were going through my mind that made me want to rip my brain out and shoot it out of one of the ball guns. what if someone took lily? there was not a whole lot of security in the place, very easy to walk in and out. what if i never saw my lily again? what if the baby in my belly never knew it's older sister? what if what if what if???? i didn't go outside cause i knew my lily would not leave on her own, and i was even holding her adorable little yellow polkadot flip flops. i clung on to those flip flops with a giant prayer in my heart that i would be able to put them back on her precious little feet.

chris is fortunately a much less emotional dramatic mess than me. maybe because he's a cop and he does serious stuff like this all the time. he went outside right away and didn't see lily. he came back inside and looked around. no lily. he went outside one more time when a man approached chris and asked if he was looking for his daughter. chris said yes and was directed to the store next door and found our hysterical little lily crying her eyes out!

apparently she had come outside and was calling out for chris and i. and then she was brought to the worker in the store. i don't know why she wasn't directed back to the crazy ball room. and i don't know why i wasn't deadset focused on my daughter. so many unanswered questions. fortunately we found her and she was safe in our arms and i was able to place her flip flops back on her feet.

we've had many discussions about how we never leave somewhere without mom or dad, and how we never leave somewhere with a stranger- whether child or adult, and even more discussions about how much we love our lily and are so thankful for her. we had even discussed in the car on the way over to the amusement park that we had to be so careful to stay close and that if the kids could not see us, then we could not see them. ah! if only i had taken my own advice.

the next day we were on the plane and i spit out so many prayers of thanks to my good Lord for letting me have my daughter sitting next to me. there are so many things about her that make me want to die because of her cuteness. her heart is so special and sweet and loving and sassy. and she's hilarious. as we were getting ready to take off, lily asked in a very loud voice if we were getting ready to blast off, causing all the people sitting around us to laugh. and she is such an artist! this is one of my favoritest things about her right now, and she drew this incredible (though slightly rated R) picture of me in the shower:


(yup, water showering me and my boobies, belly, and belt. i don't ever wear a belt in the shower, but lily thought she should add one. artistic touch.)

what would i do without this picture? and what would i do without my incredible lily??? i have to finish this post cause i am going to start crying. i am thankful that my lack of attention was nothing more than five minutes of terror followed by hours/days of giant hugs and kisses and prayers of thanks.